


Five Ways the Dishes Do Not Get Done in Stark Tower

by Teyke



Series: Cold [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Domesticity, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelum/">Caelum</a> - <i>"But no, seriously, who does the dishes?"</i></p><p>Answer: Not these people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Anger management

**Author's Note:**

> Quick ficlets written to give my brain a break from the heavy plotting of the next UU story. Each chapter is a slightly different AU answer to the question in the summary. Constructive criticism is welcomed, although I may not take it very seriously for these :P But hey, often criticism is what sets fire to my imagination...

Bruce wandered into the kitchen to find it thankfully empty, at least for the moment. Steve's sketchbook was lying out on the table, but he didn't look; Steve was pretty shy about his drawings, and if there was anyone who knew the value of privacy, it ought to be him. He crossed over to the sink, instead, which housed its usual pile of dishes, now - after him being stuck in the lab for the last twelve hours with barely a break - stacked beyond the depth of the sink; there was one bowl precariously balanced against the fawcet, and he rescued it before somebody decided to try stacking something on top of it and overbalanced the whole thing. This crew would probably do so for fun. Most times, Bruce would find it amusing... but maybe not right now.

The small ritual of rinsing dishes in the sink to put them away in the dishwasher, of making a visible dent in the present disorder, was soothing. Yet barely a minute had passed before he heard a door opening and the sound of footsteps. Without thinking, he flicked the tap off and ghosted out, with stealth nowhere near the equal of anything that Natasha or Clint could muster, but enough to carry him to the stairwell back to the lab easily. He paused, there, before the door, considered: if he had fled from potential company so easily, then going back to the lab was probably a bad idea. Not that he'd really been planning on it. The lab contained his intractable data, and moreover an equally intractable Tony, and Bruce had rather had his fill of dealing with _people_ , in general, for the day. The balcony at sunset was a far better place for him right now.

"Jarvis, would you mind turning on the sound-dampeners?" Traffic wasn't his background music of choice. "And giving me a heads-up if anyone comes up?"

_"Certainly, Dr. Banner."_

"Thanks." He settled cross-legged on the floor and turned his face up to the sun. Bringing order to his own mind was less easy than clearing the sink, but alone in the silence, and secure in the knowledge that he was merely irritated - a natural thing, so far from anger - it was not _much_ less easy.

One floor down, Steve stared at the mysteriously half-emptied sink and sighed.


	2. Tower Defense

"What - JARVIS?" said Pepper the first time she walked into the kitchen to find that massive mechanical arms had unfolded from the wall and were scrubbing a particularly uncooperative pot. She rolled her eyes. Tony must have been attempting to cook again.

 _"Yes, Ms. Potts?"_  the AI asked politely.

There was something about the arms that did not seem quite right. She looked closer, trying to figure it out - although she was by no means technologically inept, she was no engineer, either, and fully willing to admit that the subtleties that Tony might build into his inventions were often lost on her unless he pointed them out. But here... the long, curved claws that were being used to gently grip the pot handle and a scrub brush gleamed, and it was that sharp reflection which revealed their unusual nature; the inner edge of each curved claw was dull, and they did not end in points, but the outer edges were razor-sharp.

Pepper resisted the urge to sigh. "Claws?" Really? 

 _"Cleaning implements,"_  JARVIS corrected promptly.  _"The floor robots were unfortunately unable to deal with most detritus left about from the reconstruction."_  He meant, of course, the knock-off - "Excuse you, vastly improved," Tony had scoffed - Roombas.

"So of course their reach extends to the entire room," Pepper said dryly.

 _"They are equipped in all rooms, and hallways, on floors 93 through 98,"_  JARVIS corrected her again.  _"Mr. Stark thought them to be extremely suited to their function."_

That was... reassuring, actually, after the number of times people had accidentally broken in here. Although she was somewhat worried that Tony had managed to implement them without her knowledge. Being Iron Man was making him sneakier with time, unfortunately - but that was a problem for another time. The more immediate matter was that both Clint and Natasha were supposed to be moving in at the end of the week.

"Does SHIELD know about this?"

_"They are aware that Mr. Stark highly values hygiene and cleanliness, but is loathe to ensure it himself, if I might be so bold."_

So, no. Pepper closed her eyes. "Please don't surprise them."

 _"I have somewhat better judgement than that,"_  he said with some reproach, and not a small tinge of irony. She let herself smile a little.

"Alright, then. If you could get me a glass of water - " she had a slight headache, one that was not aided by the sight of a robot arm unfolding from the wall with eerie grace - she should have known something was up when he wanted to build the walls so much thicker, but she'd  _thought_  - well, never mind. Its gleaming steel claws opened the refrigerator door with care, as another extended out from the other side and fetched down a glass, handling it so gently that Pepper could see it would leave no marks upon it; the first grabbed the pitcher of filtered water and poured it into a glass without spilling a drop. It folded back into the wall - and even though she knew where it was, as soon as the panel slid back into place it became innocently unassuming.

Deadly, nine-inch long knives handed her the glass, delicately - dare she say, genteely. She took it, and took a swallow, hiding her natural impulse to do so with the drink.

 _"I shall not allow any harm to come to the occupants of these floors,"_  JARVIS promised gently.

"I know," she smiled into her drink. Because she did. And even now, as she accustomed herself to it, she found the instinctive fear fading, surpassed by her knowledge of the wielder, and the wielder's good sense - which, thankfully, far outstripped his creator's. If this had been in DUM-E's hands, or even Tony's own - but, no, Tony was not quite  _that_ insane. He knew how he could be before his morning coffee. "But you still might want to be more careful around the others."

 _"I fully plan on it."_  JARVIS' mellifluent voice picked up a tone of muted amusement.  _"Nonetheless, I had considered that you might wish to know that additional cleaning measures had been implemented."_

"Yes. Thank you, JARVIS." She smiled again, this time not hiding it. "And also for the water."

The dish in the sink had been scrubbed clean; one of the arms fetched a drying cloth. Pepper watched it for a moment longer, feeling a mix of amusement, reassurance, and affection; and then she left. Her to-do list was still a mile long, and while she had no doubt that JARVIS' 'cleaning implements' could shred the paper itself – or any computer she might put it on – the tasks still had to be done.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration for this part (rather obviously) taken from [Silver Linings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/450830) by [icarus_chained](http://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained).


	3. Scent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is maybe a bit more meta than it should be - but, hey, the AtSWG was more meta than a story ought to be, too.

Domestic chores were not often Natasha's concern. Her marks were the rich, the powerful; the type of men who might be able to attract such a beautiful woman. Life was luxury. When she was young, in the icy wastes of Siberia, then life had been the training camps of what the USSR - or those people unwilling to admit that empire's fall - would call the Red Room: each day a scrabble between life and death, made deliberately more difficult by the instructors. Each other inhabitant of the camp was a challenger; the camp itself was a death trap. Here, clothes were frozen rather than washed, food guarded jealously, perfume unheard of; scent was yet another trap.

Before that, even younger, life had been the slums of Moscow, and a dirty, squalid apartment: the scent of cheap vodka soaked into cheaper wool; winter a relief from the stink of human squalor; squalor a relief from the killing cold of winter.

SHIELD was luxury, routine cleanliness and sterility, the smell of various solvents and cleaning solutions a constant threat to her sensitive nose. Food was provided; a meal was eaten; the tray deposited at the commons and removed by processes invisible to her. Technically, she had apartments; personally, she did not care for them. SHIELD's barracks were a familiar, closed-off place, governed by routine, and if she found it restrictive then it was paid for in comfort, and the trust that her acquiescence to their ways bought.

Stark Tower was opulence, a Tzar's palace. Near-invisible servants vacuumed floors, removed old clothing and returned it laundered, ensured that the kitchen remained stocked with anything Natasha could ever have wanted to eat. Sound-proofed walls ensured that she could go the entire day hearing nothing that she did not deliberately choose to hear; it would have been easy to live in total isolation, if she had the slightest inclination to do so. She wondered that Stark _did_ , to such a degree.

 

The order to move had been delivered like this:

Fury, standing in front of his desk, not looking at her – he was skimming an open file – said, "Banner's accepted Stark's offer to stay in the Tower."

Natasha considered this, and at length concluded, "If I ask, he'll allow it." She didn't specify which 'he' she was speaking of; Fury did not ask her for clarification, simply nodded, and handed over the file: her mission dossier, surveillance and diplomacy. 

 

Stark worked out of his lab, and ate mostly there as well, ridiculous smoothies that his robots had been programmed to provide for him; otherwise, he ate take-out, and usually remembered to dispose of it, but occasionally forgot when it wasn't directly in his lab, growing more pungent by the day. Despite the common kitchen he'd designed, he was rarely in it. Neither was Banner, who seemed to have been unnaturally won over by the idea of drinkable vegetable meals, but had the unfortunate habit of leaving the blender uncleaned, so that the green coating left upon it might grow even greener. The first week, he'd remembered to clean it; after that, seduced by Stark's ever-present babble about science and the comfort of security after five years without, he forgot.

The smell bothered her. But she was uncertain what to do, why this task was not provided for; indirect inquiries of JARVIS revealed that it was simply that it had slipped Tony's mind. She considered prodding him to build another robot to take care of it, but decided against it, her imagination conjuring up the horrors he'd likely come up with, and her rational mind being unable to convince her that Stark _wouldn't_. So she said nothing and took care of the dishes herself, washing her hands in perfumed soap afterward.

When Clint moved in, he began to cook - as he was actually able to do so - and as payment, she washed the dishes: earning an eyebrow when he realized that Stark and Banner _didn't_ , but then Stark was new to the idea of home-cooked meals, and Banner, fully caught up in Stark's effervescent ego, was blind, those first two months. A stay comment by Stark, however, convinced her that if anything, he would simply have thrown the dishes away, as he was accustomed to doing with take-out boxes.

Clint, at least, could sympathize with her dislike for the smell of rotting vegetables, so on days when he didn't cook they split the chore. And if it made them both breathe a tiny bit easier, to be doing something - no matter how small - in return for living high and rent-free, well... that was not something that they needed to share with Stark either, even if Banner (eventually returned to equilibrium, as days passed and he grew used to living in Stark's orbit) occasionally looked at them thoughtfully. Not that they would ever actually _admit_ to doing the chore; give Stark an inch and he'd take a mile, and then make you think it had all been _your_ idea.

 

(As to why they didn't let Steve catch on, however: that was entirely down to gleeful whimsy. He looked adorable when perplexed.)


	4. Ghost

Phil watched as Steve came into the kitchen. "Hello, Steve," he said aloud - calling him by first name. It still sent a thrill through him, that he could call _Captain America_ by his first name. There had been many long nights that he'd spent debating how far to take the liberty; but after the touching speech that the Captain - _Steve_ \- had given at the funeral, Phil felt that he more or less had permission.

"JARVIS, would you mind starting the coffee?" Steve asked, ignoring Phil completely. Phil sighed. The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, but Phil found himself unable to keep himself from trying. The monotony of his existence wore at him.

He could wander to another portion of the Tower, beginning his daily routine of testing exactly how far he could get before he found himself suddenly back in the kitchen. In each room he would check to see if he could manage to exert his influence on the physical world, even so far as turning a handle without simply having his hand go through it; so far, the kitchen was the only place that he could, and then only when no one living was about. In death, as he hadn't in life, he'd developed a sixth sense for when Romanoff and Barton were lurking, but becoming suddenly non-material had resulted in more than a few dropped dishes.

_"It would be my pleasure, Captain,"_ JARVIS replied politely.

"Is this revenge for hacking you?" Phil asked him, calmly, not for the first time. JARVIS made no reply - he never did - but unlike Steve, unlike even Romanoff and Barton and, even, Stark - whom Phil had spent no small amount of times attempting to chuck coffee mugs at - Phil didn't become incorporeal in his presence, and Phil wasn't sure he didn't remain visible, too. Yet JARVIS never responded to him. It itched at the back of Phil's mind.

"Thanks," said Steve, accidentally shoving a chair through Phil's leg as he rearranged the table to spread his work out on. Thus invited, Phil craned his head to have a look: the Captain was working on something larger than usual, today. Too bad. Phil preferred his comics; Steve had a vastly underrated sense of black humour.

Maybe the dishes were ghost dishes, Phil mused, as he left Steve to it and tried to pick them out of the sink. He'd taken to washing them, after a while, because Steve had wondered aloud if he should; although he'd have preferred dropping them. He'd tried dropping them, to be honest. But reality didn't seem to conform much to his wishes anymore, or to his expectations.

Regardless, it seemed like Steve intended to remain planted in his chair for a good long time. The dishes remained in the sink, untouchable. Phil wandered the Tower in his usual route, until he'd ended up getting yanked back to the kitchen the full fifty times that it called for; he went down and checked on the scientists in the labs, forcing himself to listen long enough to figure out what they were currently working on - no mean feat, considering it was Stark and Banner - but it appeared that Banner was working on a filtration system and Stark on some sonic, non-lethal weapon: "A brown note, Stark?" Phil asked with a raised eyebrow, in time with Banner –and although Banner called him, "Tony," they got the same response.

Nothing to do with Tower security. Nothing to do with Loki's Sceptre. Phil wondered if the BND would affect him - he could hear just fine, although he hadn't needed to eat, or sleep, or breathe in two months. Wondering kept him from bitterness at all his early attempts to make some sort of contact, get some sort of message through. It had to be the Sceptre, keeping him here in this half-life - but Stark and Banner had long since turned from their study of it, and he couldn't step outside the Tower, onto the Helicarrier, to try to see what SHIELD's scientists were doing.

Steve was still in the kitchen when Phil returned. He seemed to be sketching fruit.

Discipline kept Phil from sighing again. He could do the dishes, at least. He couldn't drop them so that they would shatter, or lie in such a manner that a message could be spelled out; he couldn't overturn the table. He could make life slightly easier for a billionaire who could no doubt have his robot servant take care of it.

Sometimes, on the darker nights, Phil wondered if he was actually just a private sub-routine build by JARVIS, intended to run for no other purpose than that the AI could see him suffer, as a sort of catharsis. Maybe his hands were really just robot arms; perhaps that was why he could never properly drop the dishes: JARVIS took over.

He was probably over-thinking it.

But trapped in this non-existence, Phil didn't have much to do _except_ think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before Coulson got mysteriously resurrected. Or perhaps in a slightly more alternate AU. 
> 
> The specific comics (that Steve was drawing) that I was referring to are the ones by [this person](http://americancaptaincomic.tumblr.com/).


	5. Favour

Thor set out upon his journey alone. The first time, he had taken a horse and gone by foot, as he had not known the way except as described to him, and the signs, he had been warned, were often obscure; this second time, he left the horse in the stable and flew, as fast as the winds would carry him. This gave him an advantage in speed in multiple ways: not only did it shorten the journey to the mountains extremely, but without a horse balking at every nook and cranny, and only his own (admittedly considerable) bulk to fit through the narrow passages, he managed to traverse the hidden way under the mountains far more quickly than he had the time prior. Thus it was that after a mere day’s travel, Thor found himself at one edge of the root under the mountains – one of the mighty roots of Yggdrasil itself – and very shortly, with comparatively little risk compared to other, longer paths down the roots, he found himself across it.

The land beyond was a small one: diminutive not only in renown but also in practical size. The trees were smaller than even those stunted firs that he had crashed through on Midgard; his head seemed to scrape the clouds; and all over, he could not hunch himself inward enough to avoid feeling like a clumsy, lumbering giant. Before his sudden exile to Midgard, and the lessons in humility he had learned there, he might have strutted forward anyway, careless of any damage that he did to his surrounds; but before his sudden exile to Midgard, he would not have deigned to come to this place at all. The people here were small, and so were the favours they granted – small on the surface, at least.

He had come to realize that even small things could have great power.

“Back again, are you?” a voice hummed from his left.

Prepared for the sudden greeting, this time, Thor did not startle quite so badly, and managed to avoid knocking down any branches with his head and shoulders. He smiled, instead, turning about awkwardly – difficult to accomplish without knocking down the twigs that served as branches, here – and then sitting, cross-legged, so that if he hunched his shoulders, he might almost be at eye-level with the being that addressed him. “Well met, Chief,” he said, and smiled.

He did not know the Little Person’s name: that would have put him into Thor’s debt, and Thor wished no creature to be his slave. But he seemed to be in charge of the local tribe of Little People that lived here – one of many such tribes, colonies, or clusters, scattered about the crevices of the Nine Realms and responsible for an enormous part of the small magicks that typically went unnoticed by the Realms’ larger inhabitants.

“It would take you a thousand years to begin to attain true skill at this Art,” Heimdall had told him, when Thor, heartsick from Loki’s madness and death, had asked him to teach him some of the skill of Farsight. Thor had found himself standing beside the Watcher for such long hours in any case, at the end of the ruined bridge, watching the reconstruction of the Bifrost. “But if you do not expect to be able to gaze across the depth and breadth of the entire Nine Realms within a week, or a mortal’s lifetime, then yes, I can teach you.”

There had only been one place Thor had longed to look upon then – the workplace of the Lady Foster. But in the beginning, when his mind’s eye had often wandered far off course, gifting him with brief snatches of images, he had chanced across a view of this place; and Heimdall, learned as he was in nearly all lore, had explained its people and customs to him. A few days later, he had travelled here to obtain their services for the Lady Foster (whose workplace was, Thor observed, a dismal mess; and he had seen her home before, although he would not view it uninvited now). Now, months later, he was back again – although he was not sure what they would ask in return for a _second_ favour.

The first had involved an over-large giant and an equally enormous plant. Thor was not entirely sure the object of the ‘quest’ hadn’t been a mockery conjured by the Little People, out to poke fun at him.

“The Tower is larger than the Lady’s sanctum,” Chief said, rubbing his hands together. He looked... gleeful, Thor thought, and that could not be good. But perhaps a test against the Little Folk’s curious sense of humour would serve to pull him out of the strange desolation he had found himself wandering in, of late. “To clean, cook, and renew it – that will take a larger price. And the same conditions as before,” he added, in a hurried, suspicious tone, “You do not speak of us; we are not seen.”

“I have not broken my word to you, nor will I,” Thor rumbled, letting some of the Thunder into his words. For all that they had the power to slip between Realms so easily – a power that, currently, Thor greatly envied – they were a paranoid sort. Old tales of fey servants who vanished upon sight had their origin here, and even if Thor had not counted the honour of his word so dearly, to speak of this to any other would be to imperil the favour – favours, soon – that he had won.

“Hmm,” said Chief skeptically. Thor did not take it to heart; he had more patience than that, these days. “Well. There are a pair of giant’s oxen that have been running loose and fouling everything up...”

The Little Person launched into the tale with the air of one who had a _very_ long tale to tell: this task would not be simple. But patience would bear Thor out, and provide his companions with some small comfort.

Until the Bifrost was rebuilt, it was both the least and the most that he could do. 


End file.
